The appeals chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) greenlit an investigation of war crimes committed in Afghanistan since 2003 by Afghan forces, U.S. forces, and the Taliban.

The decision is the first involving U.S. forces (NYT) in the court’s history. Chief ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said she has evidence that U.S. forces committed “acts of torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, rape and sexual violence” in Afghanistan and in clandestine CIA facilities. The UN mission in Afghanistan said the Taliban and other anti-government forces have killed more than seventeen thousand civilians since 2009. The ICC had initially decided not to proceed with the investigation because its targets were unlikely to cooperate (Guardian).

Human-induced climate change raised the likelihood of the recent devastating fire season in Australia by 30 percent compared to 1900, according to the group World Weather Attribution.
 
CFR’s Alice C. Hill discusses how to prepare for when Australia’s fires rage again.
 
Indonesia: Facebook and Twitter suspended more than eighty accounts publishing pro-government content about the conflicted Papua region after Reuters revealed the accounts were linked to Indonesia’s army.

Authorities in India-administered Kashmir restored (Hindustan Times) unrestricted 2G internet access for the first time since the region’s special administrative was revoked in August. The access is set two last two weeks.

Nearly one-third of buildings in two towns in Syria’s Idlib province were destroyed (BBC) in a recent escalation in fighting and refugee camps have expanded, according to satellite images analyzed by Harvard University, Save the Children, and World Vision. 

Iraq: An American translator for U.S. forces in Iraq was charged with passing classified information (NYT), including the names of foreign informants, to a man with ties to Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

The last patient being treated for the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo was sent home (Al Jazeera) from the hospital, and no new cases of the virus have been reported since February 17 (WHO). The outbreak will be declared over if forty-two days pass with no new cases.
 
Uganda: A court upheld the detention (Reuters) of filmmaker Moses Bwayo, who is producing a documentary about the opposition figure known as Bobi Wine, for unlawful assembly and singing songs “subverting or promoting subversion of the government.”
 
CFR’s Michelle Gavin discusses the troubling trends in Uganda’s democracy.

A new draft climate law (FT) for the European Union would commit the bloc to reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The European Commision president said she would order emissions reduction targets of 50 to 55 percent for the next decade. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg criticized the proposal as being “completely insufficient.”
 
France: The country’s highest appeals court ruled (WSJ) that Uber drivers are employees, not independent contractors. It appears to be the first ruling by a top court against Uber’s classification of drivers.

Four high-level Costa Rican officials resigned (AP) after the attorney general’s office announced that the president and other government figures were being probed for misusing citizens’ personal data.
 
Colombia: Forced displacements and attacks on medical missions increased in 2019 (Reuters) amid the country’s tenuous peace agreement with former guerillas, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.
 
In Foreign Affairs, Gimena Sanchez-Garzoli looks at the failures of Colombia’s peace deal.

The House of Representatives approved $8.3 billion (WaPo) worth of emergency spending to combat the new coronavirus. The bill could be considered by the Senate as soon as today.